Saturday, April 2, 2005

Shadow Warrior Port to Linux -- 9:06 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well, that didn't take long. Ryan "icculus" Gordon managed to get Shadow Warrior running in Linux. It's very basic and apparently very buggy, but it works. He set up a page for the port and commented on it his .plan. I'll be keeping an eye on this one. Thanks Linux Games.

Best Buy to Drop Rebates -- 5:34 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune is reporting that Best Buy will drop rebates within two years. While I have a hard time buying the argument that rebates are too hard or cumbersome, rebates are still one of the world's biggest rip-offs. I had to enter all my rebate information as a to-do in my PDA so I could keep the companies honest. My favorite line came when I called to inquire why my rebate was several weeks past the 6-8 week time frame. The person said, "It has been approved; we'll expedite it for you." Hey, Johnny, why didn't you just send it out in time? Why did it take a phone call for you to "expedite" it?

Companies like rebates because many people just forget to send them in. I've had some rebates that were almost impossible to send away for because they both required the original UPC from the product. In another case, the UPC was rendered illegible by a big sticker slapped on there by a Best Buy trained monkey. Not long ago, a Best Buy higher-up had the unmitigated gall to complain about rebate fraud (people would buy things, send in for the rebates, and then return the product). Suffice it to say, I didn't shed many tears. Thankfully, this process is going the way of all flesh. Thanks Slashdot.

The Master comments: Retailers like gift cards pretty much for the same reason. Most of the electronic retailers have established shell companies in states that allow them to reclaim unused gift card balances as profit after they expire. Nice. They must hate me, since I spend those babies the day after I get them. My current gift card application will be a Sony 400-disc CD Changer. That new model is VERY sweet :-)

Friday, April 1, 2005

Google Goofiness -- 3:43 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

While most April Fool's Day jokes on this here Intarweb can hardly be called "jokes," Google has a couple that are at least moderately funny. First of all, they announced their new infinity+1 storage limit for Gmail. In reality, they have upped the limit to 2GB. Also, they announced a new line of beverages called Google Gulp, available by invitation only, naturally. Make sure to check out the FAQ.

Scorched Earth Author Interviewed -- 12:37 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Ars Technica has interviewed Wendell T. Hicken, the author of the classic game, Scorched Earth. I know I wasted many, many hours on this game back in the day. Ironically, the article came about because some kid on the Ars boards was trying say that he was the original author. That's the wrong group of folks to try to pull something like that on. Check out this thread for all of the big, fat lies.

The Master comments: I remember Scorched Earth 1.1 quite fondly. I also remember my college roomates spending 36 straight hours playing Scorch with a couple buddies of theirs on a weekend, while killing multiple cases of beer. I came back to school Sunday and had a stack of beer cans to the ceiling outside of my room. Heh :-)

J.t.Qbe comments: In college a friend and I would play at least an hour of Scorched Earth every evening after work on my speedy 12MHz 286. That and dual Tetris. Those were the days, weren't they?

Shadow Warrior Source Code GPL'd -- 9:56 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

3D Realms has released the source code for Shadow Warrior 1.2 under the GPL. It is available for download from Fileshack and 3D Gamers. Shadow Warrior was quite a bit sophomoric, but I enjoyed playing it. Note that this is only the source, not the maps, textures, sounds, etc. I'm always happy to see source code get released under the GPL so others can learn from it. Kudos, 3D Realms! Thanks Shacknews.

And yes, I actually downloaded it and checked it out to make sure that it is in fact source code and not an oh-so-clever April Fool's Day joke. I was concerned because the last part of 3D Realms' announcement said, "P.S. Keep your eyes open for the unveiling of our next game very soon. ;)" I'll believe THAT when I see it.

J.t.Qbe comments: Shadow Warrior got a bad rap from the "racist" crowd. It was really a lot of fun. I wish I'd bought it back when I found it on the $5 shelf in 1998.

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